Fortuitous Fabric Shopping

Yesterday, my brother and I went fabric shopping. This in itself is momentous, considering he suffers from an allergy to all shopping that does not involve food or manly building projects. But he wants a Medieval costume for SCA events and I told him I’d sew it if he picked out the pattern and fabric.

I stumbled upon the Society for Creative Anachronisms a few years ago, but didn’t join because I didn’t want to be by myself when I went to the meetings. Now that my brother is older, he thinks full armored combat sounds amazing and can’t wait to join me in pretending we live in pre-17th-century Europe.

While we were getting our chosen fabric cut at Jo-Anne’s, the woman who was waiting on us asked what the costume was for. We told her, and lo-and-behold she was a member of our local SCA group. She invited us to the meetings, told us what to expect, said there were a couple people close to my brother’s age there, and (best of all) that they have people in the group who practice Medieval painting. As in, illuminated manuscripts. As in, I-CAN-BARELY-CONTAIN-MY-EXCITEMENT.

I got to see a collection of illuminated manuscripts at the Cleveland Museum of Art a couple years ago. “The Glory of the Painted Page,” it was called, and it was indeed glorious. I love books, and have a great deal of admiration for those long-dead artists who hand wrote and carefully illustrated manuscripts from the Medieval period. To have the opportunity to learn that art is incredibly exciting.